ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Carlyle who had little first-hand knowledge of Italy as he had of Emerson's America. What makes Carlyle extraordinary, is that he possesses an intuitive gift which operates in a strange way alongside lack of reading or lack of first-hand knowledge. Italy was indeed 'sealed' to Carlyle for many years, sealed by poor postal services, sealed by distance and cost of travel, sealed by the unimaginable gulf between the early experience of Ecclefechan and Craigenputtoch and the sunny Mediterranean. Both Thomas Carlyle and Jane Carlyle took a strong interest in Mazzini: Thomas, who thought him obviously overwrought of preaching to Mazzini 'a sermon upon peace. While Jane tried to divert the exile's energies away from a distant Italy to a wider circle of friends in London to literary interests from which he might earn some money to make a living and give him his self-respect.
